August 16, 2006

A Mountain or a Molehill?

image by <a>KC Pau</a>

What is the real nature of a landform on the Moon? Recently, LPOD showed two high resolution Apollo 17 Metric Camera images of a peculiar hill, Mount Maraldi, in Sinus Amoris. Now, K.C. Pau has captured a telescopic view that offers a different impression. On the Metric images Mons Maraldi appears as a flat-topped, relatively steep-sided, roughly circular peak. KC’s image, with opposite illumination, shows a less unique hill with more gentle slopes and a fresh-looking crater that is hardly there in the Apollo images. The crater is so conspicuous in the telescopic view that I wondered if it had formed since Apollo times! But looking carefully at the right image of the Metric pair I could recognize the crater, although it was less obvious. In the Metric view Mons Maraldi looks strange, and I speculated in the earlier LPOD that it was probably a volcanic dome of a type of volcanic rock not sampled by Apollo astronauts. Looking at today’s image alone I would probably dismiss the mons as an isolated piece of highlands of no particular interest. So which is it?